


No Man is a Failure Who Has Friends

by insignificant457



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 19:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19302064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insignificant457/pseuds/insignificant457
Summary: “First of all, you’re dead. Sorry about that. It sucks, I know.”Gansey and Noah have an afterlife conversation.





	No Man is a Failure Who Has Friends

One moment Gansey is kissing Blue Sargent, sacrificing himself to save his friends, because that was always how he was going to go out--this is his destiny, his greatness.

One moment his heart is shuddering to a stop, a horrible sensation he is all too familiar with, and he is falling from her arms, and he thinks that at least this time, he’s not alone. At least this time his death will mean something. It is a comforting thought as the world ends around him. 

And then he is not there. 

He opens his eyes, not remembering having closed them, and finds himself in a room that appears to be an art studio. There are easels lining the walls, all of them covered in sheets, there are paint brushes lying, unwashed, in the sink. Punk music is playing softly from somewhere, although Gansey cannot find the source. And then a voice behind him says “Oh, good, you’re here.” 

Gansey nearly jumps out of his skin, despite the familiarity of the voice, and turns around. Noah stands behind him cleaning a paintbrush with a rag. He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised to find Noah here, in what he assumes must be the afterlife, although he never quite pictured heaven looking like this. It is not so much Noah’s presence here in death that surprises Gansey, but his appearance. It takes a moment for him to reconcile this Noah with the Noah he has known. This Noah is far more corporeal than he had ever been in Henrietta, even before Gansey knew he was dead, and he is absent his ever-present Aglionby uniform. This Noah wears a black T-shirt with “Blink-182” emblazoned across the chest and tattered jeans, both liberally spattered with paint. His white blond hair tufts out of the space formed by the adjustable strap of a backwards baseball cap. Gansey finds himself at a loss for words as Noah offers him a smile and gestures toward one of the stools. “Have a seat. There’s some stuff we’ve gotta talk about before you go.”

“Go?” Gansey manages to get out as he perches on a rickety stool.

Noah nods, tossing the paintbrush into the sink with the others, then hops up onto the table and sits criss-cross-applesauce, propping an elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand. “First of all, you’re dead. Sorry about that. It sucks, I know.” 

Gansey flinches a bit at the mention of his being dead, even though he’s had plenty of time to prepare himself. Despite the tightness in his chest at the thought of being dead--really, truly dead, no do-overs this time--he manages to get out “Where are we, Noah? What is this place?”

Noah smiles a little. “You asked me once where I go, when I’m not with you, you know, out there-” he gestures vaguely toward a window which is letting in natural light, but with nothing beyond the glass “-in Henrietta. This is it. Welcome to my crib.” His voice is full of a lightness Gansey cannot bring himself to feel, even though this is better than any afterlife he has imagined. He is not alone here. He has Noah. He doesn’t need to be afraid. He is anyway. 

Noah continues, “It’s my art studio in my attic back at the Richmond house. That’s where I’m from, by the way. I don’t think I ever told you that. I used to spend all my time here when I was home from Aglionby over breaks and stuff. It was the one place that was totally mine. I loved it.” He looks around wistfully, as if this is the last time he’ll see this place. “I mean, obviously it’s a replica, not the actual place. This one exists outside of time.”

“Outside...of time?” Gansey repeats. 

“Yeah. Time’s a circle and everything--you know that; we’ve talked about it--and this place is like the center of the circle. It doesn’t change, and it never touches time the way you knew it. We’ve left behind everything you’ve known. It’s my home base, and from here I can reach any point on the circle and jump into time there. Takes a lot of energy though.”

Gansey feels a bit like he might pass out, even though he’s pretty sure that’s not possible here. “Why are we here?”

“I’ve got some stuff to explain before you go back. Some things you need to know.”

“Before I go back? Back where?”

“Back to the circle. Henrietta. Life.”

“Life?” 

“Yeah. It’s gonna work this time. It has to.”

“What’s going to work this time? Noah, I don’t understand.”

Noah takes a deep breath. “Right now, you’re dead. But in a few minutes you shouldn’t be. If it works. It has to work.”

“If what works?” Gansey says, trying desperately not to get his hopes up, and failing. “Are you saying I could be alive again?”

“I should start at the beginning. You and me, we died at the same time, on the ley line. You know what happened to you after that moment, but you don’t know what happened to me. When I died, the ley line woke up...sort of. Only it was still half asleep, like when your alarm goes off and you hit snooze and go back to sleep for five minutes, but it’s not the same as the sleep before. But when it woke up for that moment before it went back to sleep, it had enough power to do something great. It could give life back to someone who lost it there, on the line.”

“Me,” Gansey said. “But why me, why not you?”

“Because I was the sacrifice. If the line gave me back my life, there wouldn’t have actually been a sacrifice and it couldn’t have woken in the first place. No second chances for me. But you...you weren’t part of the ritual. You could have yours back, so you got it.”

“Because of Glendower. But Glendower’s dead, I found his body. How could he-”

“We’ll get there. But anyway, you got your life back and you went back into that fancy party and scared the shit out of all those party guests, but you were alive. And since we’d died at the same time, I felt like we were connected in some weird way, like death twins or something. By the way, that would be a really cool band name,” Noah trails off for a moment, then shakes himself back into the story. “And since there was still a part of me hanging around, because I was favored by the line, I decided to follow you. Not like, stalker-follow, but like how you follow someone on Twitter. I kept up with what you were doing, watched your parents send you to therapy, and then ship you off to various private schools. You got good grades, you did sports, you kissed a Kennedy once at a function with your parents--you know, the highlights. It wasn’t all I did--I kept up with my parents, and my sisters. I watched Whelk get away with my murder, and tried to get the police to figure out it was him, but I couldn’t interact with them. I sort of drifted around for seven years, watching everybody live without me.”

“Noah, I’m so sorry.” Gansey says. It sounds awful. He realizes that’s what he’s in for, now that he’s dead. Will he have to watch his parents and Helen find out that he’s dead? Will he watch Ronan and Adam and Blue mourn him? Will he have to watch Blue fall in love with someone else, someone she won’t be in danger of killing? It makes his stomach twist uncomfortably. 

Noah waves his sympathy away. “That’s not the point. The point is, I kept up with you for seven years, and then, it happened. You were away at some fancy private school in New Hampshire, in the middle of your French class, and your heart just gave out. You died, right there, no pre-existing medical condition, nothing.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, but Gansey’s brain sticks on one thing. “I never went to school in New Hampshire.”

“Not in this timeline. But the first time, you did. It was called Radcliffe Preparatory Academy and your roommate’s name was Trey Garber. The roommate assignments were alphabetical by last name. He was nice enough, although that was probably the weed mellowing him out. Your parents picked the school because the president is a friend of theirs," Noah fills him in, rattling off information like it's common knowledge. "But none of that is the point. The point is, you died at Radcliffe, because your heart gave out because the ley line wasn’t strong enough to keep it going any longer. You were being powered by a line that had hit the snooze button.” Noah gets up and walks to the first easel. He pulls off the sheet and reveals a painting of people gathered around a casket. As Gansey looks closer, he begins to recognize the people. His mother. His father. Helen. There are also people he doesn’t recognize, teenagers in prep school uniforms. Maybe one of them is Trey Garber. 

“It made me so angry. I’d died, and it gave you a second chance, only for that chance to be taken away before you’d managed to do anything with it. Not that that’s your fault,” Noah reassures him, knowing intimately Gansey's desire to make something of himself before it's too late. “You were only seventeen, and you’d spent your whole life splitting time between your DC mansion and your boarding schools. There wasn’t much opportunity to make it mean something. So I thought, since it was the line that was giving you life, maybe I could find you someone with access to that power, who could get you hooked up to it or something. But I had to find them before you died. So I went back to the moment we died, and I started over. New timeline, only this time I had a mission. I had to find someone with power, and I had seven years before your battery ran out. It took me five years, but I found him.” Noah walks to the second easel and throws off the sheet. It is a painting of Ronan Lynch, age fifteen. Curly black hair an unruly mess, and a troublemaker’s smirk on his face. Gansey feels a pang in his heart at the sight of his best friend, so young and carefree. There are mountains of grief between this Ronan and the one out there right now. And Gansey’s death has just been heaped onto the pile. He feels guilty. 

“I made sure that on your first day at Aglionby, you got a tour from Declan Lynch, who introduced you to his little brother at lunch. Getting you in with the Lynch family would be the key to unlocking the ley lines power and keeping you alive. I was sure of it.” Noah’s brow furrows as he stares at the painting. “Only it didn’t happen that way. You and Ronan didn’t wake the ley line. And just like it did in New Hampshire, your heart gave out when you were seventeen, without warning.” Noah looks back to Gansey. “So I went back again. Ronan was part of the plan still, but I needed someone who would have the drive to wake the line. Who would do what needed to be done, and make the sacrifice that needed to be made, because he thought he had nothing left to lose.”

As Noah goes to lift the sheet off the next easel, Gansey says softly, “Adam.” Noah nods, and reveals another scene Gansey knows well. Gansey, bent over the hood of his Camaro, Adam with his bike, offering his assistance. “With both Adam and Ronan, I was sure it would work. I never thought to imagine you wouldn’t be able to find the damn line in the first place. Time ran out, you died again. Same as last time. I started again, same as last time. And I found you someone who would help you find the line so Adam could wake it up.”

Gansey’s heart gives a complicated tug as Noah reveals a painting of Gansey and Blue, the EMF reader between them, finally on track to finding the line, to waking it up, to keeping Gansey’s heart from failing. 

“Adding Blue to the mix brought its own challenges. The curse was an issue, but I...I don’t know. I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I didn’t think it would be you.” He sends a sideways glance towards Gansey. “No offense, but on paper you two don’t really make sense.”

Gansey lets out a watery laugh. He’s not sure when he started crying, but he can’t bring himself to care about that right now. 

“I thought I’d solved it. I didn’t know there would be a demon, I didn’t know you and Blue were gonna fall in love, I didn’t know you’d sacrifice yourself to save them. It happened like that, again and again, and you just kept dying. No matter what I did, no matter what warnings I gave, it happened the same way every time. Well, not the exact same way. Variations on a theme. Same end result though.” He pulls the sheet off the second to last easel, and the painting sends a shiver down Gansey’s disembodied spine. 

'In loving memory of Richard Campbell Gansey III', the gravestone reads. Underneath his name are the dates of his birth and his death. “Was it always the same day?” he asks Noah, staring at the death date, morbid curiosity taking over.

“No,” Noah says, “That’s just the one from the time I did the painting. It was always this year, though.” 

St. Marks’ Eve. Maybe this was destiny. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t change that. St. Marks’ Eve was a promise. Maybe it was a promise that crossed timelines. One that no single ghost--not even one with far more willpower than Gansey had ever realized--could stop. 

“I was wearing myself thin starting over and over again. I knew I only had one shot left, so I knew my idea had to be good. I decided on something I hadn’t tried before. I would let you die, and I’d find a way to bring you back again after. Just like when you were a little kid. I wasn’t going to prevent your death this time. And I didn’t. Like I said, you’re dead.” Noah takes a deep breath. He’s coming to the end of his story, Gansey can tell. He waits patiently to hear Noah’s grand plan to bring him back to life for the second time. “The problem wasn’t their ability. Ronan and Adam and Blue, they’re your magicians. They had enough power between the three of them to bring you back. The problem was that after you died, they never thought to try. They were too upset. They weren’t thinking clearly. You only have a few minutes before your soul’s too far from your body to bring it back.” He glances at Gansey, sensing his alarm. They’ve been talking here for far more than a few minutes. “Don’t worry. Time doesn’t exist here, remember? It’s only been-” he checks a digital clock on the wall that Gansey hadn’t noticed before “-one minute and forty-nine seconds there. They’ve got enough time.” He goes back into storytelling mode. “We needed someone who would be far enough removed from the situation to be able to keep a level head when you died. But someone who was familiar enough with magic, and someone who was willing to go along with your crazy hunt for a dead Welsh king. Henry Cheng fit the bill.” Noah unveils the last easel. It is a scene that Gansey has never experienced, but he recognizes it all the same. Blue, Adam, Ronan, the Orphan Girl, and Henry Cheng stand around his own dead body. “Henry makes the plan. The others execute it. Gansey wakes up,” Noah says. “Simple as that.”

“Simple,” Gansey scoffs. He turns to Noah. “There’s still something I don’t get. Glendower. I found him; he was dead. How would he grant me life if he was dead? What was it all for if I wasn’t supposed to wake him?”

“It was never about Glendower, Gansey.”

“But when I died, he spoke to me. He said-”

“‘You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not.’ I know Gansey. But it wasn’t Glendower that said that. It was me.”

“It was...what?”

“I said that to you, the first time I went back and did it over again, and every time since. I needed to get you to Henrietta so you could find Ronan, and then Adam, and Blue, and Henry. Glendower was a way to do that. That’s all it was. He was always dead. There was never a wish, never a chance to wake him. That was all just a myth. I’m sorry.”

Gansey’s destiny did not lie with Glendower. It never had. He’d started to realize that when they’d left his tomb, before everything went crazy and he’d had to sacrifice himself. But to hear that it had all been a part of Noah’s plan? That Noah had orchestrated all of it, over and over again, just so Gansey could live? He can’t get his mind around that.

“But why me, Noah? I don’t understand. Why would you go through all this trouble to save me? Why do I deserve to be saved over and over again? You died, too. You didn’t even know me then. Why would you spend your entire afterlife doing this for me?” Gansey’s voice gets tighter and tighter as he says it. It’s all he can do to keep from sobbing that he isn’t worthy of this, he did nothing to deserve this unwavering devotion that Noah has shown him. “I’m not worth it,” he whispers, helplessly.

Noah shakes his head and looks at him. “I told you, man. It couldn’t have been me. You can’t sacrifice for yourself. You sacrifice for others. You know that better than anyone.”

“But you didn’t need to-”

“Are we seriously gonna have to have an 'It’s a Wonderful Life' moment right now? Fine.” Noah stomps over to the first painting. New Hampshire Gansey’s funeral. “You know what happens to the others in this timeline? They’re miserable. Henry’s alright, but he never finds anyone who understands him, who gets trauma and destiny the way you do. He has to hide his whole life, because magical artifacts are a dangerous game, and he can’t let anyone know about his mother’s business. But he’s not that different from the Henry you know, all things considered. The others, though…” Noah looks Gansey in the eyes with a fierceness he’s never seen before. “Adam drops out of Aglionby after four months. The tuition is too much and he hates it there. Without friends, he has no reason to stay, no one to help him push through. He goes back to the trailer and public school, and since he doesn’t know Ronan, his dad never gets what’s coming to him. He moves out at eighteen, but he doesn’t have it in him to do college anymore. He gives up, and he stays in Henrietta and he works at Boyd’s for the rest of his life and he’s miserable. Blue makes it through high school and she scrapes together enough money for community college after working at Nino’s for two years after she graduates high school. She spends her life with someone she doesn’t love, living in fear of a curse that will never come true, never having found her something more because she’s never known you. And Ronan..." Noah's eyes get unfathomably sad. "In this timeline, Ronan is in the same place you are. Six feet underground, because when his father dies he falls apart and you’re not there to put him back together.” The tears in Gansey’s eyes finally overflow, and Noah’s voice softens as he says, “The reason we’re all giving everything we’ve got to save Richard Gansey is because Richard Gansey saved us first.” 

Gansey says nothing for a long time. Then he manages to squeeze out “What about you?” around the lump in his throat. “You said ‘we.’ I never saved you, Noah. I’m alive because you died. That’s kind of the opposite of saving you.”

Noah gives him a sad smile. “You’re not the only one looking for a purpose, you know. This,” he gestures around the room, “was mine. You gave me the chance to save someone’s life. That’s no small thing.”

The digital clock on the wall begins to shriek out an alarm that sounds suspiciously like Chainsaw when she’s angry. “It’s time,” Noah says. “They’re doing it now. You get to go back.” He gives Gansey a sad grin. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to come with. There’s not enough of me left to leave this place ever again. So, this is goodbye.”

“I don’t know what to do with this, Noah,” Gansey says helplessly. 

Noah smiles a little brighter. “Don’t throw it away.”

Somewhere outside the timeless art studio, back on the circle of time that Gansey left what feels like hours ago, Blue Sargent places her hand on his cheek and tells him to wake up.

And Gansey does.

**Author's Note:**

> Noah is the catalyst for the entire series now, sorry I don't make the rules. 
> 
> The title is from It's a Wonderful Life.


End file.
